“No,” she said. “I don’t. You’re acting as though I can’t look after myself.”
“You can’t, my beauty. Not against what’s coming.”
“What’s coming?”
“Death,” he said. “For some. For others, escape. But none of it makes for a safe place for the likes of you.”
“A little melodramatic, aren’t we?”
“No.”
With that, Dex took her by the hand and led her some distance down the hall, turning to the right after a time. As they walked, more torches lit up in advance of their arrival, illuminating their path through the dark spaces. After a few minutes he took her down another, narrower passageway. This one was not lit by torches. It was pitch dark, damp and ominous.
He wondered if he was frightening her yet.
“Where are we?” she asked, holding tight to his hand.
“We’re in a special place,” he replied. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“Show me? I can’t see anything.”
“I know.” Dex shuffled a hand through a pocket and extracted a lighter, which he flicked into working order, shining its flame at the wall next to them. “What do you see?” he asked.
Flick leaned forward, studying the smooth stone. “Pictures,” she said. “A…bird?”
“Look closer,” he replied, and she obliged.
“Dragons,” she said. “Dragons, flying. Flames shooting out of mouths. Dragons…at war.”
She turned to stare at him, her beautiful face stunned, high cheekbones reflected in the dim light. Seeing the wonder on her face only made him want her more.
“Yes,” he said. “Dragons at war.”
“With one another?”
“With other shifters. With each other. With humans. Our entire existence has been a struggle to survive.”
“But you’re so…”
“So what?”
“So big. So strong.”
“Strength of the few is of no significance when the many want to take you down. For centuries we’ve had enemies in packs of Wolves. Mauls of Grizzlies. You name the creature, it’s wanted to kill us. But in all that time, we never had to face modern human weaponry.”
“You think the humans would try and kill you?”
“I know they would. As do you. We’re a lost species, just as you’re a lost girl. And I want to keep it that way. We will be hunted if Eldrich manages to release our secret. We aren’t wanted here in London, by shifters or by humans. A man like Eldrich enjoys throwing his weight around, but that’s only because he’s too stupid to realize the risk. We’re all targets until we figure out how to combat the threat at hand.”
“How to combat it?” she asked. “Are you saying you’re going to kill people?”
“No,” Dex replied. “That’s not my plan.”
“Well, what is it?”
“If it comes down to it, I’ll enlist help. This isn’t a battle I can fight alone.”
“But you took Eldrich on easily enough in the club—”
“Eldrich is a fool, and easy enough to defeat physically. But it’s a long-term plan that I’m after, and that may mean seeking out the aid of others of my kind. I have some thinking to do in the meantime. If our enemy makes his move, then I’ll be forced to act. Until then I want to keep the peace in London as long as possible.”
“I could help you,” Flick said.
“Yes, I’m sure you could. But I’d rather not involve you in this. It’s too dangerous a matter.”
“What if I tell you I’m already involved?”
“What do you mean?”
Flick huffed out a hard breath. “I mean, there’s no way I’m going to go home tonight and forget that you’re a sodding Dragon shifter. There’s no way I can forget that I met you. I’m part of this now, Dex. Don’t ask me to pretend this didn’t happen. Don’t ask me to pretend my life hasn’t changed completely in the last hour.”
“I don’t need to ask,” he told her, his brows knitting, angry, vertical creases forming between them. “I could make you forget.”
“Try it, and I’ll punch you where it hurts, Dragon.” A challenging expression brought her eyebrows together, mirroring Dex’s own expression. His chest heated with admiration. It took a strong woman to stand up to a fire-breather.
“I have my ways,” he said. “You’ve seen my tactics.”
“Well, don’t use them on me. I don’t want to forget any of this.”
“Oh? What do you want, then?”
“I want…”
Chapter 6
You.
Flick had almost said you.
It was the truth. She wanted him so badly that it hurt like no craving she’d ever known.
She’d met so many shifters over the years. Wolves, Bears, Lions, Eagles, even the odd rodent. But Dex was unlike any other shifter; he may as well have come from another planet. Dragons had only ever been a myth, and this man was a walking legend.
But that wasn’t why she wanted him so badly, why she felt so drawn to him. That desire seemed to have grown from another force entirely, one that pulled her towards him, unrelenting, sensual and arousing. If she’d been a believer in fate she would have said it was destiny that had driven them together. Destiny had brought them both to the Underground on the same night, destiny had made them run into one another not once, but twice over the course of an hour.
Maybe it was destiny that made her ache for his touch, too.
She leaned back against the wall and took a deep breath. “I do want to help,” she said softly. “I want to be part of all of this.”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Flicka,” he replied. “I keep telling you, it’s dangerous.”
“Walking into the Underground Club is dangerous, too. You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t take my life into my hands when I insert myself into a group of powerful beings? I do it because it’s where I want—need—to be.”
His lips ticked up in a smile. He looked so gorgeous in the dancing flame of his lighter. “So, you’re a glutton for punishment then? Fine. For now, let’s get you out of here. Where do you live?”
“Paddington,” she said.
“I’ll take you to Paddington, then. Come,” he replied, turning away to guide her further down the hall. He reached his hand back, feeling for hers, and she took it, staying close behind as he guided her through the dark.
After a minute or so they were climbing up a steep tunnel that turned slightly to the right and continued to rise. “We’ll come out near your neck of the woods. I’ll walk you the rest of the way.”
“I’ll be fine on my own,” she said, though it felt like a lie. She’d never be fine again, not so long as she knew he was out there somewhere and that she didn’t have him.
After a time they reached what looked like another stone wall, a dead end. Dex stepped through, reaching for her once again, and pulled her with him. A moment later they stood on Sussex Place, only a few blocks from her flat.
“Amazing,” she said, looking around. “The other shifters—they aren’t so well-versed in magic, are they?”
Dex smiled. “No,” he replied. “Not so much.”
“This is magic, isn’t it? This thing you do?”
“What do you think?” He was staring into her eyes, his irises turning gold under the dim street lamps as though in response to her question.
“Think? I think you’re amazing,” she replied. Lightheadedness was overtaking her, a feeling of floating in his presence. Was this his magic as well? A spell that he was working on her mind?
Whatever it was, she liked it far too much.
He lay his fingers on her neck, slipping them under her long hair to stroke her skin. She closed her eyes, parting her lips to push out a quick breath. Waiting, hoping that he would accept the tacit invitation to kiss her. She needed to feel those lips of his. Needed to know if her instincts were right. If they were indeed meant to be together.
A swift breeze b
lew her hair back, and with it, the feeling of his fingers on her skin disappeared. When she opened her eyes he was gone. She pulled her chin up to look to the sky, and for a moment she thought she saw a dark shadow sweeping into the clouds overhead.
There would be no Dragon’s kiss tonight.
Chapter 7
All night, Flick’s dreams swam through her mind in a long series of erotic delights. The dark-haired Dragon shifter was at the centre of her universe for the duration of her sleep. That face of his. Impossibly light eyes framed by raven-black hair. Exquisite, skilled lips that felt so real that she never wanted to wake up.
She saw him so clearly, but she could feel him, too. Dex’s sweet, sensual mouth on her nipples, her hand cradling his head, fingers twining through his hair as he tended to her body’s every craving. She felt his tongue lashing at her sex, drawing orgasm after orgasm from her as she moaned his name in her sleep. His cock, driving deep inside her, gentle and violent at once as he took ownership of her body and she gave herself to him, her channel pulsing with pleasure. When he shot his seed inside her, her head swam with ecstasy.
At one point they’d stopped making love and were fully clothed, lying together on a couch inside a strange, faraway house by the sea. The scent of salt drifted on the air. Sultry summer breezes warmed her skin. The sound of children laughing rang, shimmering, somewhere in the distance.
She could hear—no, feel—the Dragon shifter’s voice inside her. Feel him talking to her, telling him how much he desired her. How he loved her. How he would look after her forever. How their family was the most important thing in the world.
Their family.
When she shot awake in the morning, the sounds and aromas of the real world were already assaulting her. Horns honking outside, a half-empty bed drawing her back to reality. Life had returned, if only to remind her that her bliss had only been a dream. A sweet one, but a dream nonetheless.
It was Friday morning. She had to go to work, just as she did every other weekday. Somehow she was supposed to return to her mundane daily routine, even after what she’d seen and felt the previous night.
An obedient slave to her paycheque, she dragged herself out of bed, showered and dashed off to work, trying to get herself excited at the prospect of what the day might bring. Well, if she wasn’t to see her Dragon shifter again, then at least she could entertain herself with thoughts of him.
Her small desk at the London Herald was, as always, covered in memos, papers and unfinished projects. Stories that she was supposed to write about banal topics like flower shops and the latest trends of argyle socks and garters made of some new sort of elastic. Nothing quite so interesting as what she’d encountered the previous night.
She sat down at her swivelling chair and leaned back, smiling to herself, wondering if this was how Lois Lane had felt when she’d discovered Superman’s identity. Of course, Lois couldn’t possibly have felt this good; Dex was far better than any superhero. He had fangs, flame and scales as exquisite as the surface of the sea. He could shoot himself into the air with wings both powerful and delicate. No need for red capes for a man like Dex.
His superpower was being a sexy man with biteable lips.
“Working hard, I see,” a familiar, nasal voice shot out from somewhere behind Flick as she daydreamed.
Bollocks.
Mr. Dixon, the boss from the bowels of hell, was hovering over her work station. She drew herself up, fingers hitting her typewriter’s keyboard hard as he perched on the edge of her desk.
“Was just thinking about a story,” she said, staring straight ahead at the blank page that poked out from the machine in front of her.
“Oh? Well, I hope it’s about the latest in wellies, because as you may recall, that’s your assignment.”
Flick looked up at him for a moment to protest, only to see the man’s face glaring down at hers. He was rancid, this one. His employees liked to joke that he put the dick in Dixon, and speculated that he spent his evenings alone, writing lists of all the homeless people he’d murdered in back alleys before having them stuffed for display in his cavernous lair.
Smelly, greasy, repulsive man. He reminded Flick all of a sudden of the rodent shifter in the bar. A fantasy flew across her mind of holding a knife to his throat and threatening him until he begged for mercy or pissed off.
Right, then. Perhaps it was time to consider a new line of work. She was beginning to wonder if there was any sort of employment that involved a certain Dragon shifter and sexual intercourse.
“Yes, I’m thinking about wellies. Of course I am,” she replied, returning her eyes to her typewriter as she told herself to stop thinking about ways to torment her employer.
Mr. Dixon leaned in. “Good. See that the story is on my desk by noon.” he said, puffing out the words so that somehow he managed to blow out a series of repugnant breaths into her ear before heading back to his office.
Flick shuddered. How was it possible that she lived in a world that contained both a man as sexy as Dex and one as horrid as this clod? It seemed so wrong, somehow.
For the rest of the morning she did her best to focus her mind on work, getting the sodding wellington boot story written up well before noon. It wasn’t hard to go off on a long diatribe about the many wonderful assets of the rubber footwear. “These miracles are waterproof!” she raved, “Perfect for London’s rainy season, i.e. every season! Great for treading through puddles and kicking one’s idiot boss in the jaw.”
She left the last bit out.
Before long, she’d managed to write an entire manifesto about why every man, woman and child on her side of the Atlantic would soon be sporting the hideous, blister-creating monstrosities. “Why couldn’t I have gotten a job as a political writer?” she moaned as she proofed the article, nibbling on some morsels she’d brought for lunch.
Finally at 11:50, she carried the brief article over to her editor, Grace. A surly, middle-aged woman who never smiled.
“Thank you, Miss Jones” said Grace, taking the paper from Flick without making eye contact. “I’ll get it to Mr. Dixon this afternoon.”
“Great. Thanks. I’ll be off then.”
“Suit yourself.”
The lightness returned to Flick’s stride as she set out for the elevator. Her afternoon was to be spent doing “research,” which meant that she had the privilege of wandering along various streets in the Marylebone district, studying displays in shop windows. Much as she despised certain aspects of her job, getting out for frequent walks was a much more pleasant endeavour than the sitting at a desk nonsense that other reporters had to endure.
By 12:30 p.m. she was parading along Oxford Street, bag slung over her shoulder, notebook in hand. She was to begin her journey with a few of the newer stores that had begun to crop up at the west end of the road, no doubt in an attempt to distract London’s inhabitants from the fact that their city had recently been decimated by German bombs.
The shops catered to people who obviously possessed more money than they could spend. A plain white shirt went for two pounds, a pair of dull trousers for nearly four. The prices were outrageous, but clearly someone was willing—and able—to pay them.
As she wandered, Flick watched London’s hurried inhabitants jostling between one another’s bodies as though they were running an obstacle course, sour looks painted on their features. Every one of them looked so frantic to get from point A to point B that it seemed as if they’d forgotten to breathe.
Flick smiled to think how oblivious Londoners were to the shifters who wandered in their midst. Creatures with altogether different priorities. To a man like Dex, the most important thing in the world was ensuring the survival of his kind. But to humans, it was making sure they had a coffee in hand before returning to the office, only to run about like hamsters on a wheel day in and day out. Humans didn’t think to question their existence, even after the horrors of war. It was as though they’d simply reverted to whatever they were before the bombs fe
ll. Machines who produced for the sake of others.
Now, that would have made for a good news story—why was it that humans had evolved into a species of mindless servants?
Flick turned her back on the pedestrians, staring instead at a series of mannequins who adorned the Selfridge’s window display. Small children in overpriced, ridiculous clothing, a mother dressed to the nines, all faceless, all dull, all perfectly posed, perfectly thin, perfectly plastic.
She’d just begun to jot some notes down when a deep voice interrupted her train of thought.
“Considering purchasing yourself a very tiny pink shirt, are you?”
Chapter 8
Flick’s eyes found the reflection in the window. A very tall, very broad-shouldered man stood to her left, a smile on his face. His intoxicating scent flitted around her head, prompting her heart to dance a passionate tango in her chest as her senses sprang to life.
“I’d happily consider buying the shirt, if you thought it would suit me,” she said, eyeing his reflection.
“Oh, I’d say a skin-tight shirt would suit you very well indeed. Perhaps you could do away with the undergarments, though. I wouldn’t want them interfering with my view.”
Flick turned to face Dex, trying and failing to mask the smile that crept along her lips. “Shocking talk from a gentleman,” she scolded.
“Is it? Yes, I suppose it is. Still, it’s honest.”
“I suppose I can respect that. And what, may I ask, is a man like you doing in a place like this?”
“Window shopping, of course,” Dex replied. “I need a new pair of children’s slacks, and I could certainly use a stylish handbag.”
Flick narrowed her eyes up at his, silently conveying serious doubt. “You are not window shopping, Mr. Liar.”
“Fine, then. Lady shopping. I was looking for you in fact, my beauty.”
“Oh?” Flick raised her left eyebrow, trying to mask the flood of pheromones that had just unleashed inside her at his utterance of a possessive pronoun. She wanted so badly to be his, wanted him always to refer to her as mine, just as he’d taken possession of her in the dreams that had played their way through her mind all night. “I must admit, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again,” she added.
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